He patted my shoulder, puffed his cigar, smiled around it, apparently sensing my unease. “Tell you what. You call me Ben and I’ll call you Nate. How’s that sound?”
“Fine, Ben.”
He narrowed his eyes and made a mock menacing face. “Just don’t call me ‘Bugsy’ or you’ll find out what a crazy asshole I really am.” Then he laughed quietly and motioned toward an exit. “Let’s go out on the deck, Nate. I been wanting to talk to you.”
“Fine. I should say hello to a friend of mine, though.”
“Miss Hogan, you mean? She’ll keep. She’s keeping Tabby company, and Tab’ll be working this room till I drag her outta here by the hair.”
By “Tabby,” I gathered he meant Virginia Hill, who seemed to have as many nicknames as she did personality quirks.
“Mick,” Siegel said to his baboon-like bodyguard, “take a break. Have a beer or something.”
“Sure, Ben.”
Raft didn’t have to be told that Siegel wanted to talk to me alone; he just faded back to the bar and another soda water. I hoped talking was what Siegel had in mind. My Ragen affiliation might brand me an enemy, after all. I hoped his affability wasn’t a mask that would drop as he tossed me casually overboard. Three miles is a hell of a swim, particularly with a broken neck.
It was cool out on the dimly-lit deck, as we leaned against the rail. Big band music was still coming out the speakers, in a fuzzy, tinny way: “Am I Blue?” A few necking couples shared the rail with us, but none were close by. Siegel smiled out into the darkness, the tip of his cigar glowing red, as the blue of the ship’s neon trim bathed us.
“I hear good things about you,” Siegel said.
“I’m surprised you heard of me at all,” I said.
“Fred Rubinski says you’re one of the best in the business.”
“I’m good. If I were great, I’d be rich.”
“Not necessarily. To be rich you got to be born that way, or be willing to kill for what you want. You don’t look like you were born with a silver spoon, and the word is you don’t like shooting much.”
“Who does?”
“Cowboys like Mickey Cohen. It helps to have boys like that around sometimes, especially if they can be trusted. Anyway, story is you don’t like rough stuff but you can dish it out if you have to, and can take it too. And the story also is you don’t look down on people like me. You aren’t too proud to do a job for a guy like me.”
“It depends on the job and it depends on the money.”
Siegel smiled wide again, a smile that could charm an A-plus out of the meanest old maid school teacher. “I like you, Nate. I known you, what? Under five minutes, and I already know I like you. That’s a good sign. You know why?”
“Sure. It means I’ll wake up tomorrow morning.”
He waved that off, flicked cigar ash over the side. “Don’t be silly. Guys like me and Guzik, we only kill each other. A guy like you, if he plays it straight, even if he’s out on the fringes, he’s not going to buy it.”
“That’s encouraging news, Ben. And it’ll come as a surprise to that dentist who got drilled at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Frankly, I got a reputation for being tight with Outfit guys that ain’t entirely deserved.”
Long lashes fluttered over baby-blue eyes. “How’d you get that rep, then?”
I shrugged. “Mainly, when Frank Nitti asked me to come ’round, I came ’round. I didn’t see any other option.”
He smiled gently; the son of a bitch was almost pretty. “I suppose that’s right,” he said. “But word is you were privy to inside dope and you never took advantage of it, and you never leaked it. Not to the press and not to the cops.”
“Listen,” I said, putting as much edge in my voice as I dared. “I got friends who are cops. I even got friends who are honest cops. Don’t make me out to be a wise guy. Don’t trust me with any secrets. I don’t want to wander off the fringes to where I qualify for the ‘only kill each other’ club.”
He waved that off, too. “Don’t worry. See, I’m going straight. I’m turning this West Coast operation, most of it anyway, over to Dragna and Cohen. I’ll get my split, but the day to day shit, I’m not interested. I’m a legitimate businessman, now.”
“In the resort business.”
“That’s exactly right,” he said, gesturing with the cigar, waving it like a wand before the black horizon, as if he could make a rainbow at will. “Since the war thousands of people moved to L.A., and it’s just a half day’s drive to Vegas-and I’m going to make the Flamingo the greatest vacation spot in the world.” He flicked a forefinger off a thumb, riffling his carnation. “Pink. Flamingo. It’s on my brain-but it’s only the beginning. There’s Reno, there’s Lake Tahoe, all fucking gold mines if you can create vacation spots where people with a little money can have good rooms, good food, good shows, swimming pools, tennis, golf, and all the gambling they want, and all the broads they want. And all that shit’s legal in Nevada. And the politicians are for sale and so are the gaming licenses.”
“Sounds like the ideal place to go legit, all right.”
He went enthusiastically on: “I tell ya, Nate, I owe a lot of what I see ahead to my pal Tony, here. These gambling ships of his are the blueprint-he’s known all along the big dough’s not to be made from the highhats, or the high rollers, either-but the middle-class, the average joes, who can be sucked in to play the slots or a roulette wheel. Regular folk who ask only that a joint be clean, attractive, safe, professionally run. Tony’s known from day one that a casino is a volume operation-the big money comes from a lot of little square johns on vacation with a few hundred bucks to blow.”
“You and Cornero go way back.”
“I had money in the Rex. I don’t have any in this bucket, and that’s partly ’cause I got so much tied up in the Flamingo, and also that I’m not convinced Tony’s gonna get away with this.”
“You think he’ll get shut down?”
“I’m afraid so. Tony’s a sharp guy with great ideas, but sooner or later, every time, he hits a streak of bad luck. I only tore myself away from my baby ’cause I wanted to be on board to show him some loyalty. He’s an old pal, and that’s what it’s all about. You want to get ahead, you got to have friends, people you can depend on-you got to have their loyalty.”
I wondered where that left his dead brother-in-law, Whitey Krakower.
“Well, I got to admit your Flamingo sounds like a money magnet,” I said, not as convinced as I seemed to be. “You’ll have customers lining up in the sand.”
He nodded, smiled slyly. “That’s where you and Rubinski come in. It’s like I said, I’m strictly legitimate now. See, it’s like me turning my bad check action over to Fred. Think about it. Where would you expect a guy like me to turn for action like that?”
“Well, to be honest, I’d figure you wouldn’t go to a private detective, at least not a straight one like Fred. You’d use some juice collector, some arm breaker.”
“Right. But a legit businessman, he doesn’t do that, does he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So there are things I need guys like you and Fred for, from time to time, that if I turned over to some enforcer, or even somebody with a few brains like Mick, would be handled with no fuckin’ finesse. Which is bad for business.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
The sound of a motor launch approaching interrupted us.
Then Siegel said: “Fred says you used to be on the pickpocket detail, back in Chicago.”
I shrugged. “That was my first plainclothes job. Most of my ops are former pickpocket detail guys. Fred isn’t, though.”
“Right. At the Flamingo I got a little staff of ex-L.A. and Hollywood cops who are my private police force, only those assholes couldn’t catch colds. I could use somebody to teach ’em the ropes, for general security and especially at nabbing dips.”
“With a resort like the one you’re building,” I said, “you will have a pickpocket problem. No question about it.”
“Would you take that assignment from me?”
“I might be able to send a man out, or find somebody qualified through Fred…”